


Tales of Republic City

by meredyd



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Drabble Collection, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-26
Updated: 2012-07-26
Packaged: 2017-11-10 19:39:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/469927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meredyd/pseuds/meredyd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tiny stories in a big place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Long and Quiet Streets

Mako is leaving Bolin and like it does every time it stings. He runs through the usual litany: Bolin won’t be alone, it’s a crowded park and they’ve gotten to know the people in their corner of it these last weeks. It’s light out, he won’t be gone long, Bo isn’t a baby anymore. Still a kid, but not a baby. Mako doesn’t remember the last time he thought of himself as a kid.

They have to eat. That’s the biggest one. He winds through the city, gangly but unnoticed, and looks for flyers. There’s plenty of odd jobs, especially for benders, if you search close and fast. He can be back by the afternoon. 

“We’re going to be fine,” Mako says, and pretends he’s talking to his brother.


	2. Rocks and Water

“One more try and then we’ll spar.”

Korra let every muscle of her body go limp as she fell backwards into the snow, sighing as loudly as possible. Katara shook her head. 

“Korra. One more. And try to pay attention this time. Harness your chi, just like when you’re fighting.”

“’m not fighting though. Just bored. This is  _boring.”_

She spread her fingers out against the dummy anyway, and closed her eyes. 

“Better,” Katara said, when she’d opened them again. “One day somebody could be in real danger, and what will help them is you,” she tapped Korra’s nose, “concentrating. Feeling what’s hurting them inside of you, and washing it away.

“It sounds more interesting when you talk about.” Korra inched closer to Katara’s side. “Is it true you really saved people’s  _lives?”_

 _“_ Before I could do that, I had to learn, just like you.”

Korra tried to imagine Katara during the war, young and dark-haired, the same kind smile on an unlined face. She could only manage it for a second before it faded away under the wrinkles of her Sifu, the only Katara she had ever known.

“That really was better,” Katara said. “And I bet someday, you’ll even be as good as me. Come on. Let’s practice your new forms.”


	3. Pathways

Katara works for hours, while the others sleep outside of her door, but Asami is wide awake. There’s an ache: shoulders, clenched hands, the soles of her feet. Next to her Korra’s mother leans against her father, breathing gently in a restless doze.

There’s nowhere really to go in this small room. Asami heads out. 

The General’s fleet has left but he hasn’t, and Asami finds him nursing a pot of tea against the growing cold. He wordlessly offers her a seat. 

The tea is strong, dark and bitter, but good. She gradually feels warmer, and awake, and the General’s silence is familiar in its comforting civility. 

“You did impressively well out there today,” he finally says, hoarser than usual. “As far as I’m concerned, as good as anybody in my fleet could.”

“I know how my father works,” says Asami.

“Forgive me. I didn’t mean to stir up more bad memories.”

And Asami laughs - it’s cruel, somehow, she doesn’t recognize it as her own. 

“Don’t worry, General. I suppose it’s all in the past, now. Now I —“

Asami realizes she can’t follow that thought to the end. Now, what? 

“Please call me Iroh.”

“Iroh,” Asami tries it out, “Now I fix the mess my father’s left. Somebody has to.”

She’s warm and the ache has eased. The General - Iroh, she corrects herself - studies her, not uncomfortably. He looks as tired as the rest of them but somehow still clean and calm. 

“My Grandfather had a saying. Well, he had a few. But he was especially fond of this one. ‘Destiny is something you choose.’ It’s something we can all choose.”

Asami looks at her cup, the steam swirling and rising and being swallowed by the white Southern air. 

“There’s a place for you in the United Forces, Miss Sato—“

“Asami.”

“Asami.” His smile crinkles the very corner of his eyes: gold, warm, clever. “It’s good to know there’s more than one path.”

“Another one of your Grandfather’s sayings?”

“One of mine.” Asami watches him, and thinks, and something forms.

“One that’s true,” Iroh says.


	4. One by One by One

**I.**

From even a young age, Kya is self-possessed, radiating a quiet confidence that is infectious to those around her. She becomes the de-facto leader of her friends and schoolmates without doing much at all. 

“She’s practically raising herself,” Katara says, and Aang hears the slight dejection in her joke. 

But her daughter is often sad, and when the life leaks from her slow and grey Katara is the one she holds to bring it back again. 

**II.**

Bumi goes through hobbies and projects like Momo goes through lychee nuts, and it’s become something of a game for Katara to guess what he’ll take up next.

There are the magic tricks which end when a flaming playing card hits Kya in the arm, the rock climbing that leaves him with a broken foot, the attempt to read every book in library which quickly bores him to tears. 

So when he picks up a box of paints and keeps at it day after day Katara’s surprise is beyond pleasant. 

His first present to her is a landscape. 

“I added a rainbow,” Bumi says. “Is that okay?”

**III.**

Once a week, every week, Katara and Tenzin have tea together. They talk about everything: bending, his siblings, Katara’s long-ago adventures. The two of them are encased in a little world in the back room of the Jasmine Dragon. 

It is Katara he tells first, flushing to the top of his head, about Lin, and later about Pema. Only Tenzin knows what his mother once nearly did to a Fire Nation solider under a rain of ice.

Once a week becomes once a month, then once a year. Their teashop is exchanged for the inside of an igloo or the kitchen of a temple. 

Always, though, Tenzin pours her tea first. 


End file.
